


Of Wishing and Receiving

by Siremele



Category: Clock Tower (Video Game 1995)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siremele/pseuds/Siremele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary knows there is nothing wrong with getting what you want. Nor with asking assistance to anyone who might be helpful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Overlimits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overlimits/gifts).



> First of all, English is not my first language, so, sorry for eventual Very Strange Things.  
> I want to thank Clarita_Black for her unconditional (like always) support. Without her, I would had gone mad with the development of this story.  
> And a big Thank You Very Much to everyone in Real Life that, even not enjoying fanfiction, or even barely knowing what IS a fanfiction (or doesn't knowing at all before knowing me), helped me with cheerleading, plot help, English help, help help.

The house was silent except by the sounds of the news at the television in the living room. Both Mary’s parents were seated at the sofa paying great attention to what was shown about some dead politician’s ex-wife getting married, about a war somewhere and about other boring things that pick only adults' interests. Probably her mother had a gossip magazine on her lap to flip through when the news got too boring even for her. The eight years old girl was supposed to be in her bedroom by this time, more specifically under the covers after having her teeth and hair brushed, but instead, she was carefully opening the door to the basement and going downstairs on tiptoes.

 The place was barely illuminated and there was a lot of dust over the boxes, the useless pieces of furniture and the old sheets that covered one thing or another. Mary had no problem neither with the lack of a good lamplight neither with the dust, and she walked with intent towards a corner that had a pile of cardboard boxes.

 She stretched her arms and reached for the box that was on the top of the pile. The box wasn’t heavy, and Mary put it on the ground next to her feet with ease. Then she grabbed the box that was underneath the first one and put it on the ground beside the other, opening it as soon as it reached the floor. She knew her mother didn’t like her appreciation for the old things the family kept in the basement, but she couldn't care less about this specific concern of her mother, even if she knew she would be grounded if her mother found out what she was doing. Those old, dusty things had belonged to many members of Mary’s father’s family; most of it to his mother, Mary’s grandmother, and the girl was really fond of them. One of her favorite gifts – she considered her grandmother would had given Mary everything she wanted if the older woman was still alive – was the Ouija Board she pulled out from the box along with its planchette.

 Since Mary begun her incursions to the basement, four years ago, she liked the old board with drawings she could not understand, but which she liked anyway, and used to delineate them with her fingers. When she entered preschool and discovered the alphabet, she was thrilled to know that the beautiful old board full of drawings was, actually, full of the same letters they taught her at school, but a lot more stylized.

 By that time, Mary asked her father what that board was, and while her mother crossed herself repeatedly, he explained to her that it was a harmless game his mother had enjoyed very much during all her life, and then he helped Mary to find the planchette needed to play the game and taught her how to play. Next day, when he left for work, Mary was beaten by her mother, and although she could not understand why the woman was so mad about her going into the basement and playing with grandma’s things, she promised never put her feet there again, and this put a stop to the beating. From that day on, Mary sneaked to the basement only when her mother was paying attention to anything but Mary, and preferably when her father was at home.

 Mary sat on the floor and crossed her legs, then placed the board on top of her knees. She had to be quick because last time her mother caught her downstairs she threatened to throw away her mother-in-law’s things and then a big argument began between Mary’s parents. Mary closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Since the door to the basement was closed, she could not listen to the television, and after she had opened her eyes and exhaled, she asked:

 “Helel, are you there?” And then she repeated the sentence under her breath over and over again and begun an eight-shaped pattern to wait for an answer.

 Helel was her oldest friend. When she began talking to spirits, he was the first one to be gentle with her, and soon they introduced themselves so she could call him by his name.

 “Helel, are you there?”

 Mary felt the usual thrill at the first spontaneous movement of the planchette. It went to YES.

 Mary smiled happily. “How are you, my friend?” Still smiling widely, she asked in an almost inaudible tone even if she wasn’t really waiting for an answer to this. Then she added, in a louder voice. “Will Simon want to marry me when we grow up?

 Mary began the eight-shaped pattern again thinking in her crush. Simon Barrows was two years older than her and they met at school. She knew she wasn’t supposed to befriend a boy, since they were all disgusting, but still he was the only one that didn’t make her want to slap him just for being a boy. Not at all times, at least. And he was kind of cute. Well, some day she would grow up and since all adults marry someone, the only boy she could think to marry in some years was Simon.

 The planchette moved slowly, but unmistakably towards YES.

 Then it moved swiftly towards O-N-L-Y-I-F-Y-O-U-W-A-N-T-T-O.

 Mary widened her smile even more. She was a bit concerned about her future husband since she saw how more heated the arguments between her parents were getting. She did not want to think that it was what she would have for the rest of her life when she left childhood. Now she was happy because she knew life with Simon could not be as bad, and she shake her body in some sort of dance while still seated and whispered “Thank you so much, Helel!” and moved the planchette first towards T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U and then towards GOOD BYE.

 The girl put away the board and the planchette inside the box, closed it and put it on the pile again. Then she grasped the other box and placed it on the top of the pile to make things not so easy to her mother in case she decided to get rid of the board. Mary went upstairs again on tiptoes, and stopped a minute in the corridor trying to listen to the house and decide if it was safe to go to her room. Listening only to the television, the girl ran as fast as she could without making a sound, went upstairs to her room and in a matter of few minutes she was ready to bed and under the covers.

 

* * *

 

Mary pushed the club’s door after checking her reflex in the small mirror a couple of times to assure herself that her light brown hair and her make-up were alright. While she crossed the door she inhaled deeply and approved, again, the amount of perfume she had put on. She saw Simon at a table and waved, smiling, and walked through the room with all grace she could muster. He was alone, what made her stomach perform some funny flutter. Finally she would have an actual date.

 The boy greeted her cheerfully, and easily they fell into a pleasant conversation about nothing and everything. Mary let herself lose in his smile, his voice, and the way he moved his hands while he talked. All those things were too easy for Mary to notice when they were together, probably since ever. They were sitting across each other, and Simon offered her the drink he had in front of him, and Mary did not accept it because she was still underage and that probably was something alcoholic. Mary wished he reached for her hand, but she could be patient. She finally was on her first date, and if she had survived to all this waiting until now, she could wait a few more minutes as well.

 A beautiful girl crossed the dance floor with an angry look in her face. She went straight to Mary and Simon's table, and stood with crossed-arms staring at the boy's eyes.

 "So you were lying. Again. It was for this skinny child that you dumped me? And don't you dare to look at me as if you could not understand what I am talking about. You said you did not broke up with me because of another girl and here you are. I bet she can't do half the things I do for you, Simon."

 Mary felt her face heat at the innuendo and looked away from the girl. She gestured to the waitress intending to order something to drink, just so she could focus on anything but Simon and his ex-girlfriend. She listened to his response, disappointed by the amusement in his voice. He was smiling.

 "Hey, Mary is not my girlfriend! I always told you she is my baby sister, didn’t I? “Mary stared at him, her stomach dropping to her feet. No first date, then. “And I have no other girl, I never lied to you. Now could you please leave us alone? I don’t have anything else to say to you and I think you already finished.” Simon took a sip from his glass and turned his attention fully to Mary, ignoring the other girl. The waitress arrived, the other girl went away fuming, and Mary ordered a soda. Simon was focused only in his drink, now.

 Simon sighed and looked into Mary’s eyes. “She is crazy, don’t mind her.” He took another sip, smiled, and reached for the inside pocket of his jacket. “Now, before the others arrive, let me show you something. You will be the first person who I show this.”

 Mary forced herself to smile, using all her willpower to not show to him how disappointed she was for being only his baby sister. She looked to the paper he handed to her, trying to guess what that was while she let sink in the information that there were more people coming by.

 She picked the paper and unfolded it. It was an admission letter from a college in UK. Mary knew all about that college, even if she was centuries away of the day she would need to start worrying about colleges, applications, and all this boring stuff. But that was Simon’s reality now, so she was well aware of all procedures and of all of his expectations regarding the matter. The paper she was holding carried exactly the information Simon wanted the most, and that Mary wanted too for his sake but feared for her own sake. He was accepted in his dream college abroad, what meant he would move there and Mary would lose him, at least until she had lived the next two years to be able to leave Norway too and join him in England. Even if just as a baby sister.

 She chose to focus her attention at his achievement and happiness, what made possible for her to smile gracefully and happily and congratulate him.

 "So, who are the others?" She asked after the revelation, watching him put away the letter, and sipped her soda.

 "Only the guys of the football. And I thought you would bring Redzee. Where is she?"

 "Don't call her that. You know she hates it." Mary stand for her red-haired friend, thinking in something to give as excuse since the truth was Mary went alone because both the girls believed that it would be a date. "She is not feeling very well."

 The other boys arrived short after that. Mary tried her best to have a good time, or at least to appear to enjoy herself despite the confirmation of her invisibility to Simon and their eminent goodbye.

 Simon asked to drive Mary home, and he kissed her cheek before she got out of the car.

 When Mary entered home, her mother was standing by the window on her dressing robe.

 "You slut." The older woman said by way of a greeting. "Where were you, using this disgusting perfume?"

 Mary felt the urge to look down, but instead she stared at her mother’s eyes. "Hello, mom. This is none of your business. Good night." Mary walked towards the stairs, feeling her limbs trembling, but rejoicing her small victory. Her mother's voice haunted her upstairs.

 "If you think a nice and rich young man as Mr. Barrows will ever want something serious with someone like you, you better start to cry your sorrowful soul to that evil board of yours."

 

* * *

 

Mary checked her house's mail box and found it empty. She sighed and entered her house. It was time for her letter to arrive, bringing with it the answer about her future. Mary knew that each second that passed while she and Simon was separated her chances with him was more and more reduced. She needed to go to the same college as him, or she would lose him forever. They talked on the phone often, and wrote to each other occasionally, so Mary was assured she had been doing all she could to not let they became strangers in the past two years. But physical proximity was imperative, so she needed to go to England as soon as she could.

She went straight to her bedroom when she entered her house. As soon as she stepped inside the room she froze on the spot: her drawers were open and its contents were partially scattered through the room. Her mattress was out of place, and her pillow, duvet and sheets were lying on the floor. The boxes that usually could be found under her bed had been pulled and partially emptied. Mary felt white anger rise to her throat. Glancing over specific places she noticed that some things were missing, such as her cigarette packs, her perfume bottle, and her Ouija Board.

Mary knew who did that, and she went downstairs fuming. She found her mother at the kitchen sitting and staring at the door with a blank face. In front of her, on the table, was a lot of Mary's stuff: the missing board, a box of contraceptive pills, the missing perfume and cigarettes and the letters she received from Simon in the past years, all unfolded. Mary felt the urge to kill her nosy mother.

"Why did you do it?" Mary snarled, clenching her fists. "Those things are mine. How did you dare?"

Her mother's face showed disgust when she answered. "Because you are trying to destroy the life of a man that does not deserve it. He was always a nice boy, always accompanying his parents at the church. You are a filthy witch.“ She pointed to the things over the table. ”You are a comfort woman, a sinful whore. I don't know how God will forgive me for letting you become this."

Mary let her mother talk, feeling angrier at each second that passed. She begun to fold her letters again, putting them on a tidy pile.

"How would I ever destroy his life? You are making up things just to annoy me. It is so clear why dad left you."

Mary's mother went livid, and threw a paper over the letters Mary was folding. Mary glanced at the paper, it was her reply from the college. She grabbed it and read it.

She wasn't accepted.

When Mary looked at her mother, the woman was smiling triumphantly. "I knew you were up to something. When I saw this letter, I found out what it was. You tried to keep it hidden from me, I know. But here is your answer: you are not worth that college, you are not worth Mr. Barrows. Your father left us because of you; you are not worth his love."

Mary sighed, pressing her lips together to not let them tremble. She decided to not allow her mother to break her anymore. Two could play that game, the difference was that Mary would not lose.

The young woman neatly folded again her refusal letter and put it beside the others, then resumed the task of folding each one of her violated missives.

"And you think I had been selling myself for cash just because I take contraceptive pills and have some money, right?" She didn't wait for her mother's response. "Well, we are in 1978 and contraceptive pills are a reality you must accept, even being such a self-righteous little woman. And I mean it when I say dad left us because of your craziness. He’s been giving me some cash occasionally since he left. You made him leave you. Not me."

That was a half-truth. Mary saw her father only twice since he left, and even if he really gave her money both times, the last one was a couple of years ago. Mary finished her task with her letters hating that she was trembling slightly, but one look at her mother’s face comforted her: the older woman was pallid, white lips shaking and eyes watering.

"You are lying. You want to make me suffer because you are heartless, you can't love nobody, neither your own mother. You are a prostitute and a liar."

Mary collected her belongings carefully and an outraged air took form on her mother's features. "You may think what suits you better. You disrespected my privacy and it will have a cost for you, you just wait."

"Let go of those things right now, Mary. I will burn them all. I've been being so lenient on you! And you are grounded. Let go this demoniac game and listen to me!"

"Am I grounded? I don't think so. I am of age now, I can do whatever I want. And you keep..."

"You may be of age,” Mary was interrupted by her mother. “but you still live with me. If you don't want to follow my rules, go away."

Mary felt the rage freeze her blood. She turned on her heels and went to her room. If her mother said anything, Mary didn't listen. She slapped her door closed and locked it, then threw her things over the mattress, and some of her letters slid and fell on the floor. She grabbed the board and sat cross-legged on the floor, placing it on her knees. She reached for a box that was half under the bed and searched through its contents until she found the planchette.

Mary was done with her mother. She didn't need that sanctimonious old lady bossing her around anymore. She didn't need that envious, nosy woman telling her she would never marry Simon.

"Helel, are you there?" Mary called and begun the frantic eight-shaped movement. "Helel, are you there? If you are there, please show me." Mary felt she was putting too much pressure to the planchette and maybe that was why she wasn't getting an answer. Or maybe even Helel had fled her. "Who's there?" Mary softened her touch over the pointer, and repeated "Who's there?"

The planchette led her fingers to an amount of names, all of them unknown for Mary, and between some of them the pointer spelled curses and offenses towards Mary.

She was beginning to panic. All she wanted in that moment was to rely on her old friend, but instead she was lost among hostile spirits just like when she was a child. "Helel, are you there?" Her voice failed. The planchette continued its movements, now forming only offensive names, and Mary begun to cry.

Then the planchette stopped abruptly and Mary controlled her sobs. She kept her fingers over the pointer waiting for something to happen, and then she remembered to focus on the board and to keep her mind open. Her fingers moved with the planchette again.

I-A-M-H-E-R-E

And then one of her letters that was on the floor caught fire. It was the refusal letter from the college.

Mary smiled, understanding that Helel had just saved her the trouble of dealing with the hostile spirits and that he knew her pain of not being able to be near Simon. She took some deep breathes to keep her emotions on check. She had a purpose when she initiated the séance, so she needed to resume her plans.

"I am done with her. I need to be free. Whatever it costs."

It took a couple of minutes for Mary to obtain an answer, but it came.

P-A-C-K-Y-O-U-R-T-H-I-N-G-S-W-A-I-T-H-E-R-S-L-E-E-P

The trained Mary’s eyes accompanied the planchette.

M-A-K-E-S-U-R-E-S-H-E-L-I-T-C-A-N-D-L-E-S-T-O-N-I-G-H-T

Mary resumed the eight-shaped movement. She was calmer now and could listen to the house’s sounds. It seemed her mother was still downstairs, probably in the kitchen. So it was just this? Pack things, light candles? That was how she would get rid of her mother?

Oh.

Mary pulled the planchette towards GOOD BYE, but she felt the movement being somehow slowed, and lightened the pressure of her fingers. Helel was talking again.

T-U-R-N-O-N-S-T-O-V-E-S-B-U-R-N-E-R-A-N-D-L-E-A-V-E

After wait for a few more minutes, Mary closed the board and got to work.

 

* * *

 

Mary stared at her reflection on her improvised vanity, actually a chest of drawers with her grandmother’s mirror on top. She looked at her carefully arranged light brown waves that reached her shoulders, at her showing cleavage, not too deep to be vulgar, but enough to attract men's eyes, and at her make-up, applied to the right places in right amounts to better show her most beautiful features. She was pleased at what she saw.

 She was not a skinny girl anymore, far from this. She sprayed perfume on one wrist, rubbed it on the other, and then sprayed again in the cleft between her breasts and behind both ears. She smiled at her image and left her small room.

 In her living room, Mary passed her altar with her ritual candles, chalice and idol and reached for her small dining table, where her purse and keys were already waiting for her.

 Mary left her flat, bought with the money provided by the insurance company for diagnosed accidental fire with partial destruction of the property and one casualty. A gas leaking caused the fire and an unfortunate candle the pious old woman had lit. Mary would always wear a lopsided grin whenever she remembered all the talking the neighbors did about how God works in mysterious ways and He let Mary and her mother have a fight so the younger woman could leave the house and be spared of the same fate as her mother.

 She took a taxi that would let her in Barrows mansion. The imposing house was visible from afar, surrounded by trees. The Clock Tower, the locals used to call it. It was a huge and elegant place that Mary knew would suit her better as home than the house she was raised in or even than her flat. That was a house with some history between its walls and that pretty much pleased Mary. The board probably would proof very useful when she moved in there.

 A butler opened the door when she knocked. Oh, the old ways. She was led to inside the sitting room, where Simon was with some guests. He came to her with a wide smile on his face and his arms spread. She hooked her own arms around his neck, hoping the movement could squeeze her breasts enough for him do not have a way to not be drawn in the view. But he just grabbed her waist in a tight bear hug, lifting her from the ground and then placing her back, not lingering one second more than necessary. Mary suppressed a sigh. Still the baby sister.

 "Welcome back, Simon!" Mary glanced over the few guests. "We missed you being around on a daily basis."

 "I missed you too." He smiled again. "Mary, I want to introduce you to someone. He looked back and signaled for someone to approach. A woman stood and came smiling sweetly.

 Simon introduced her as his girlfriend, and Mary suddenly felt herself quite inappropriate with her lack of a higher degree, her job as secretary at the local children’s school and her flawless, natural Norse, that showed she was just a regular woman. The British was so much more natural to that mansion!

 The night was considerably nice. Of all guests, Mary was one of the last ones to leave, and when she did, it was cold. Simon offered her his jacket, what she accepted at once. She took a taxi back to her flat, knowing that she would must to act soon if she did not want Simon to marry that so adequate British woman.

 Arriving home, Mary prepared to perform the ritual that would bring Simon to her. During the past two years she learnt a lot about what was really possible for one who knew what, how and whom to ask. Helel was one of them. Mary put away her purse and Simon’s jacket in her bedroom and dragged her dining table there as well, along with the chairs. Then she bathed, draped herself only in a black robe and walked to her living room transformed in a ceremony room.

Both white and black candles were already on the altar, white candle at the right and the black one to the left, along with a bell and a long kitchen knife. The Baphomet symbol was on the wall, and Mary filled the chalice with cheap champagne after closing the curtain and turning out the light. Then she lit the candles and wrote in a piece of paper – parchment was too expensive for her wages – what she wanted from that ritual: _I want Simon to wish to make love to me_. She placed the paper beside the black candle.

 Mary took the bell and begun to walk in a circle in a counter clockwise direction, ringing it while she walked. She rang the bell nine times until she completed the circle. She returned it to the altar, took the kitchen knife, then faced the Baphomet symbol and pointed to it with the knife to invocate Satan.

 “In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi excelsi! In the name of Satan, the Ruler of the earth, the King of the world, I command the forces of Darkness to bestow their Infernal power upon me! Open wide the gates of Hell and come forth from the abyss to greet me as your sister and friend! Grant me the indulgences of which I speak! I have taken thy name as a part of myself! I live as the beasts of the field, rejoicing in the fleshly life! I favor the just and curse the rotten! By all the Gods of the Pit, I command that these things of which I speak shall come to pass! Come forth and answer to your names by manifesting my desires!”

 The room was quite dark, the only source of illumination were the two candles over the altar. Mary raised her arms while she invocated Satan without noticing she did it. She was completely focused on the words she said, thinking about how she desired the ritual would bring Simon to her. That was the first time she performed a lust ritual, so she was nervous. She breathed in deeply before begin to call the Infernal Names.

 “Lilith, Cimeries, Bast, Nergal, Mormo, Beherit, Amon, Hecate, Demogorgon, Naamah, Ahriman, Tunrida, Ishtar, Typhon, Proserpine, T'an-mo, Asmodeus, Pan, Nija, Thoth, Chemosh, Pluto, Astaroth!”

 Mary stepped forward and took the chalice, draining it at once and feeling her eyes watering from the drink’s gas, then she put the chalice down again. She turned to her left, pointed the knife straight forward and called loudly the first prince of Hell. “Satan!” Then she turned to her left again, the altar behind her back, and called the second prince using the privilege of knowing his true name, and not the stupid Roman translation. “Helel!” She turned to her left again, called “Belial!”, and after turning one more time, she faced the Baphomet symbol again and called “Leviathan!”

 Mary put the knife on the altar before resume her speech.

 “Come forth, Oh great spawn of the abyss and make thy presence manifest. I have set my thoughts upon the blazing pinnacle which glows with the chosen lust of the moments of increase and grows fervent in the turgid swell. Send forth that messenger of voluptuous delights, and let these obscene vistas of my dark desires take form in future deeds and doings. My loins are aflame! The dripping of the nectar from my eager cleft shall act as pollen to that slumbering brain, and the mind that feels not lust shall on a sudden reel with crazed impulse. And when my mighty surge is spent, new wanderings shall begin; and that flesh which I desire shall come to me. In the names of the great harlot of Babylon, and of Lilith, and of Hecate, may my lust be fulfilled! Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!”

 Mary took another deep breath. She was less nervous now than she was at the beginning. She left the ceremony room and went to her bedroom to perform the next step of the ritual. She grabbed Simon’s jacket and lay on her back on her bed. She hugged the jacket and inhaled Simon’s scent. She closed her eyes and remembered his touch on her waist, his arms firmly around her body, and imagined those same arms pinning her on the bed.

 Mary begin to touch her breasts while she recalled his bear hug from earlier, and after a few minutes and a few more remembrances she opened her robe and led one hand to between her thighs, while the other caressed her nipples. She imagined him fucking his perfect British girlfriend right now, and then she changed her imagination to include herself in his bed, girlfriend nowhere to be seen, talking dirty and thrusting deep inside Mary. She added speed to her movements, and soon she was moaning Simon’s name in her release.

 Mary felt the urge to turn to her side and sleep, but she couldn’t. Instead, she stood up on unsteady legs, fastened her robe back and went to the ceremony room again. She took the paper and read it out aloud. “I want Simon to wish to make love to me” Then she thrust the point of the knife through the paper and hold it in the flame of the black candle and watched it burn, after what she said "Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!"

 Mary took a piece of paper from one inner pocket of her robe. Reading it, she recited in well-trained Enochian the Seventh Enochian Key, regarding lust, glamor, and the rejoicing of the delights of the flesh. She put away the paper, took the bell, and walked in the same counter clockwise movement ringing the bell for nine times again.

 “So it is done.” Mary said, then spent a moment looking at the altar. She unlit the candles, opened the curtain, and went to bed to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Mary called Simon and asked if he would be home that evening. She already knew his girlfriend went back to England to prepare things for her definitive move to Norway. When Mary heard from Simon that yes, he would be home that evening, Mary promptly gussied up and called for a taxi.

She arrived at the mansion and knocked, Simon opened the door to her in person. When he looked at her, Mary saw that something had changed – it was as if that was the first time he saw her in his life. He looked surprised and quickly looked her from head to toes, seeming to get embarrassed when he noticed what he just did. Mary just smiled, and handed him his jacket.

“Thank you very much for lending it to me the other day.” She stepped inside the foyer. “Oh, and I bought us some cookies, I know those are your favorites.” She showed him the package she held in the other hand.

They went to the living room, where the television was turned on even if the two occupants of the room weren't paying any attention to it. Mary told Simon that the reunion the other day was great, but she had to share him with the others, and she missed having him all for herself. She noticed he was stealing glances at her mouth, at her body, and she was thrilled with this.

They ate cookies, Simon ordered the maid to prepare some hot chocolate to them. Mary begun to recollect childhood memories, she made him remember how inseparable they were as children, and he bit her bait, remembering funny stories of their early years of teens and of small adventures since he was allowed to have a car. Simon went to his room to retrieve some cassettes and they played parts of shows he recorded then.

Mary saw him smile and move around her in a way he never did before. He asked her to go with him to the library, where he would show her something he was preparing to publish now that he graduated. There they drank his father’s scotch, and Mary listened when he felt comfortable enough to open up and say how much he missed his mother and how unprepared he was to deal with the eminent death of his father. The old man was fine, but he had cancer, so he would not last too long. Mary listened and held him in a tight embrace. They stayed like that for a long moment, until Simon disentangled from Mary and looked her in the eyes, hands on her waist.

“There is something different in you, Mary. Did you change your perfume?”

Mary smiled. No, she used the same perfume since when she begun to wear any. But she knew he wasn’t really expecting an answer, and she allowed herself to look to his lips just before she closed her eyes to receive his mouth over hers.


	2. Compassion

Finally, Mary felt at home. After one year of arrangements to her wedding, and after three weeks of honeymooning, she had established a nice routine.

Every day she woke up and chose Simon's clothes for the day, and then she dressed herself and woke him. She went to the kitchen, saw what the maid was preparing, and gave some directions to the governess about housekeeping - the first days of this routine has consisted much more of Mary asking questions than giving orders. At the time Simon showed up, Mary already was in the sitting room with their breakfast, and they talked until the last minute they could. This first talking in the morning remembered Mary of their teenage years, when everything was a great topic for conversation. Simon went to work, then, and Mary explored the house.

That was a really big house. Most of the rooms were locked for as long as Simon could remember, Mary asked him. The governess at first seemed to dislike her interest a bit, but Mary was the new mistress, so she just handed the keys to Mary. The most noticeable locked rooms Mary found were a mannequin room and a trophy room, both of them showing clearly that Simon’s ancestors had been very passionate in their hobbies. She found too a disorganized library, some rooms turned into storage rooms, and a cave-like basement.

Mary entered a room, took her Ouija board there and inquired the spirits about the room, the house, the former occupants, the deaths. She wasn't the least afraid of the hostile spirits anymore because even if they tried to harm her, she had allies that were more powerful on the other side. Mary took her time with each room, even if she needed to come back the next days to be satisfied, and she planned changes on the way the house was kept while she explored.

Mary stopped her adventures to eat lunch, and then she headed to the school in which she still worked, even if only for half a day. She had explained in the school that she would stay as secretary for as long they needed her, but she was intending to get pregnant as soon as possible - since the honeymoon she had quit the pill - and when that happened she wished to be home all the time.

Mary arrived home after Simon, and then they dedicated the evening and the night to one another. They had dinner together, watched TV, read one to another, or Simon played the piano for Mary. He was happy, she could tell, and she was just as happy as he was.

Nevertheless, the house was a big and lonely place now, since Simon's father had died and the only remaining occupants were the young couple and the servants. Mary was looking forward for the day she would fill that house with running and shrieking children. That was a good prospect. In the meantime, she and Simon just spent time enjoying their newly wedded lives while Mary expected she would conceive and start her own family soon.

 

* * *

 

It did not take a long time to Mary to choose one of the rooms used as storage to be her own study and another one to be her ceremony room. She bought some parchment and a dagger, put them along with her other belongings brought from her flat, and built a better altar than the one she once had. She decided to keep both rooms locked for good measure.

 It did not take a long time to Mary to notice the governess crossing herself more often each day that passed.

 

* * *

 

The children playing at school always made Mary smile. They were sweet, innocent, happy, and they still had everything to live and learn. They were pure and honest. And they were cute, all of them, even if they would grow to be ugly adults, or even ugly teenagers, all of them were beautiful. Mary wondered how her children with Simon would look like, and she used to imagine many possible combinations between hers and Simon's features.

 Standing near the playground, at the children's recess, Mary was immersed in her musings about her future kids when she saw a little girl running, stumbling and falling. The little one begun to cry loudly, and Mary reached the girl with few steps and took her in her arms, checking the girl and looking for wounds. That was a gesture Mary knew as a child only from her father, since her mother never seemed to care that much.

 "Easy, my love. It's alright."

 Mary found the girl's knees and palm of hands scratched. After murmuring many kind words to the girl, Mary managed to walk her to the infirmary. She went back to the registry office, then, since the recess was over, and wondered how much time would it take for her have her own child to hold with so more love and care than her mother did for her.

 

* * *

 

It took eight months after the marriage for a blood test confirms that Mary was pregnant. She bought a pair of baby shoes and put it over Simon's pillow. When they went to their room at night and he saw it, he was thrilled, and promised to take Mary to dinner in the town the next evening as a celebration.

 Mary was very excited with the big news. She looked herself in the mirror every time she could, and she wished she could already see any difference on her bump. She told her colleagues at the school that she was leaving soon to finally became a mother, so in a few years she would be able to bring her own little one to initiate his or hers studies there. In a fortnight, Mary quitted her job.

Her next step was to dismiss the governess. The woman was annoying with her constant habit of crossing herself and of not looking Mary in the eye. Mary had got rid of her own mother so she would not need to deal with a stupid, pious woman criticizing and undermining her life. She would never let someone as low as a governess to make her feel uncomfortable; and now that she was on her way to have her first child, she wanted to have total control over all aspects of her own house, what made a governess useless. She could manage very well to give orders to a butler, two maids, a caretaker and a cook.

 

* * *

 

Mary woke up in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom. After she used the toilet, she found a slight trace of blood on the toilet paper when she dried herself. The maternity magazines she bought said that a small amount of blood was normal at the first weeks of pregnancy, but she would see a doctor as soon as possible. She decided to do not tell Simon what happened until she had sorted this out, and the first thing she would do in the morning was to call her obstetrician and schedule an appointment.

 She laid down with her hands cupped over her belly, and got back to sleep after almost an hour. She was woken by Simon, he was calling her softly, but he was pale and obviously very concerned. Mary was forced to be fully awake by a strong cramp, and then she felt the humidity in the linen. Simon was talking about to help her into the car, and she let him guide her without complains, knowing very well what was just happening.

 

* * *

 

Mary watched on the TV the news about the birth of the second son of Prince Charles and Princess Diana from a bed in the hospital. She was feeling like she could bury herself alive and just wait for her death. After five miscarriages and many tests on hers and Simon’s fertility performed by different physicians, the obstetrician placed a cerclage in Mary. She had given birth to a weak girl that died during the labor, and now she was imprisoned in the hospital for a few days. In this meantime, the Princess, already a mother, was giving birth to her second healthy baby.

 When Mary went back to her home, she was tired, both physically and mentally. Simon was taking care of her with an excessive devotion that made Mary feel even more frail and useless. She wanted him to scream at her, to blame her, but he only showed compassion and understanding. And pity.

 Mary tried to talk to Helel, but he did not answer her callings at first. All she had to talk to was angry spirits that mocked her incompetence to bear a child or that ordered her to leave the house, claiming that she did not belonged there, that she ought to leave Simon alone. Helel eventually appeared and silenced the other spirits, like always, but it was too late. Mary already believed that she was not meant to be happy.

 Simon was being overprotective for more than a month, now, and he made a habit of calling Mary at his lunchtime every day, of arriving home earlier always he could and of avoiding to have sex with her, always claiming tiredness. Mary knew he was trying to take care of her, but talking more and having less sex would not make them parents. However, even if they had never had trouble communicating with one another, Mary felt it was not fair to him to tell that his efforts were more annoying than helpful.

 She decided to act the way she knew would show results. If a lust ritual had first brought him to her, she would repeat the procedure. She locked herself in her ceremony room and performed everything again. That evening they did not lost time dining, they went directly to bed, and a few hours later, they went to the kitchen to steal food from the fridge like kids.

 

* * *

 

Mary tried everything she could think of, and everything she read on those maternity magazines. She did not want to give up, not when she still theoretically was young and able to conceive. To be a mother was more than her dream, now. It was a mission, a duty, almost an obsession.

 She didn't answer her colleagues’ calls from the school anymore, ashamed of her failure as a mother, and the house seemed even emptier with the lack of children. Mary had dismissed the cook and one maid and had just dismissed the butler too, since the Barrows household did not receive guests to justify one, not anymore. So now, it was the couple, a maid and a caretaker in the mansion.

 Mary’s preoccupation with trying to conceive and to see her pregnancy to its term was beginning to tire Simon, and he was talking about adoption, but she pretended she was not listening to him when he begun to talk like that. She would give birth to a child, that was granted. The next time Mary saw a positive result on a home pregnancy test, she knew what to do.

 She had used the test early in the morning, so she draped it on toilet paper, then in a plastic bag, and put it in a drawer next to her grandmother’s mirror before waking Simon up. She passed the day anxiously waiting for the night to come, and one of the things she did to keep herself busy was to prepare the ceremony room. She positioned the candles, prepared parchment and pen, brought a bottle of sherry, her black robe and some maternity magazines to the room. In the evening, she ate dinner with Simon, they went to bed, and Mary did not let herself to fall asleep. After Simon finally slept, she stood up, took her used test and headed to the ceremony room.

 Mary put the robe over her clothes, lit the candles, and poured sherry on the chalice. She wrote on the parchment: _I wish this pregnancy to not end prematurely,_ _I want this child to be born alive_ , _I want this child alive after the delivery_ , _I want to be a mother_ , and put the parchment next to the black candle.

 Mary took the bell and begun to walk in a circle in a counter clockwise direction, ringing it nine times while she walked. She left the bell on the altar and took the dagger, pointing it to the Baphomet symbol on the wall, invoking Satan loudly in a discourse known by heart. Then she proceeded with the Infernal names.

 “Yen-lo-Wang, Kali, Amon, Tchort, Apollyon, Hecate, Mephistopheles, Proserpine, Adramelech, Tezcatlipoca, Mania, Yaotzin, Metztli, Diabolus, Ishtar, Coyote, Behemoth, Tunrida, Lilith, O-Yama!”

 Mary took the chalice and drank the all the sherry, feeling it burns her from inside. She put the chalice on the altar and turned to her left, which was the South, and pointed the dagger in that direction calling “Satan!”. Then she turned to her left again, to the East, and called “Helel!”. She turned to North, calling “Belial!” from there, and when she faced the Baphomet symbol again, she called “Leviathan!” from west.

 Mary breathed in deeply before continue. “With the anger of anguish and the wrath of the stifled, I pour forth my voice, wrapped in rolling thunder, that you may hear! Oh great lurkers in the darkness, oh guardians of the way, oh minions of the might of Thoth! Move and appear! Present yourselves to me in your benign power, in behalf of one who believes and is stricken with torment. Succor me through fire and water, earth and air, to regain what I had lost. Allow no misfortune to allay my path, for I am of yours, and therefore to be cherished. As Satan reigns so shall my own whose name is as this sound: Mary is the vessel whose flesh is as the earth; life everlasting, world without end! Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!”

 Mary put the dagger on the altar and remained near it. She looked up to the Baphomet symbol. She needed to put in words what was consuming her soul, but suddenly she felt it was hard to talk. She knew she had invoked the four princes of Hell, but it was in her friend Helel that she thought when she could begin to open up.

 “All I want is to be a mother. You see, I feel like I was born to it. Even having my mother as my mother was good to me to learn how not to be a mother. I want your help. I need your help.” Mary took the pregnancy test and discarded the plastic bag and the paper, than grabbed the test fiercely. “I am pregnant again. It is hard to me to get pregnant. The physicians say there is nothing wrong with Simon and me, that we both are fertile. But I take forever to get pregnant. And when I do… I just lose my babies. I lost all of them. You know this, I am sure” Mary felt she would begin to cry any moment now “I don’t know why I’m even bothering to tell. But all of them are dead. One doctor said we could prevent the miscarriage. After that, I buried my baby girl. She was so tiny!” Mary felt the tears now, and did not try to stop them. When she talked again, her voice was ragged. “She was small. She was pretty, very pretty. I could have loved her with all my being. I did love her with all my being. But she died when she was supposed to be born. Why? I know I can be a good mother. All I want is this child that is inside me now to be born and to be mine. I don’t want to adopt. Life isn’t fair! I have a big house, I have money, I have so much love to offer, and I don’t have a baby! Please let me be a mother! Please help me to see my baby be born alive to be loved by me!”

 Mary cried copiously for the next minutes. She cried again for each miscarriage, she cried for had built hope all those times just to be disappointed so soon. She cried for her baby that was still inside her, and cupped her hands protectively over her belly, wishing the gesture would be enough to keep him or her safe until the moment of the birth. Her tears gave space to dry sobs, and the dry sobs took a time to reduce enough for her to continue the ritual.

 Mary took the parchment and read it aloud. “I wish this pregnancy to not end prematurely. Shemhamforash! Hail Satan! I want this child to be born alive. Shemhamforash! Hail Satan! I want this child alive after the delivery. Shemhamforash! Hail Satan! I want to be a mother. Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!”

 She then took the dagger and pinned its point through the parchment, and hold it in the fire until it burnt. From inside the inner pocket of her robe she took a piece of paper with the eighteenth Enochian Key and read it loudly, casting Helel and his blessing. Mary rang the bell again, walking in a circle, and when she finished it, she said “So it is done.”

 

* * *

 

"The baby's heartbeat is a little higher than it should be." Dr. Simpson listened to Mary’s belly with the fetal stethoscope. He repositioned it and listened for a while before talking again. "There is another heartbeat. This one is too weak and a bit slow. You are expecting twins, Mrs. Barrows. Why did you wait more than eight months to call me? Based on what you told me, you have quite a history with your prior pregnancies, so why didn't you schedule prenatal exams? You should be taking vitamins. And I will not lie to you, your babies' heartbeats are something to be worried about."

Mary was absolutely calm. She knew nothing wrong would happen this time. She had not been so self-assured since her first pregnancy, because now she would be aided by the princes of Hell. And she would give birth to two babies! Mary felt a huge wave of proud of herself.

"I have a sad history with my pregnancies indeed, Dr. Simpson, thank you for bringing this up, but I know, or if you rather, _I have faith_ , that this time I will became a mother. And I am taking vitamins, I know the drill. This is my seventh pregnancy.

Dr. Walter Simpson put the fetal stethoscope away and felt Mary's belly with both gloved hands. "Mrs. Barrows, I assume you found my number at the phone book, am I right?" Mary nodded. "I do assist home deliveries, but only if the patient is under no risk at all, because even perfect pregnancies may turn into risky deliveries. Your babies will very likely need extra post natal care, so their delivery must be done at a hospital. If you had been my patient since the beginning, I would have you inside a hospital right now for a Caesarean section. I can call an ambulance and we can head to the hospital immediately. Mr. Barrows can accompany us if he wishes. The babies are already in position to birth. You will enter labor soon, and we should not take this risk. You need a Caesarean section."

Mary covered herself when the doctor stopped touching her and looked to the anxious face of her husband. She saw he was eager to agree with Dr. Simpson, so she put a smile on her face and looked squarely inside his eyes.

"I am alright, Simon. We are alright. We don't need a hospital. Hospitals never helped us through all those years. I will stay, and our babies will be born here. Dr. Simpson, we thank you for your concern and advice, but I'm not coming. We called you because Simon was worried and I agreed with him months ago that eventually I would see a physician. I would appreciate if you come here when my babies chose to be born. We can pay you twice your fee. But I'm not coming to any hospital."

Dr. Simpson was gathering his belongings; he pressed his lips together in obvious dissatisfaction. “We have rules, Mrs. Barrows, for our legal protection and our consciousness as doctors and for your health as a patient. You are on a delicate condition and I cannot assume the risk of a home delivery knowing that your life is at risk. Yours babies’ lives are at risk. You must go to a hospital to receive the adequate treatment. I am afraid this is not a choice.”

Mary looked at Simon to seek help, and her husband showed he wasn’t really agreeing with her, but he said, nonetheless “We can sign a responsibility term, Dr. Simpson. We assume all risks involved in this home delivery. Can we do this?”

Dr. Simpson did not seem pleased with Mary's decision, nor with Simon’s proposition, but he nodded and said nothing. After a few minutes he left, assuring the Barrows that he would attend their babies' delivery when the time came.

Mary at first refused to think about Dr. Simpson's concerns regarding her babies' heartbeats, but that soon changed. She chose to prepare the basement of the house to the delivery of her children instead of her bedroom, so they could be under the protection of Baphomet. A cradle under the star. That was quite poetic.

So when Dr. Simpson arrived, he was guided directly to the basement, where Mary was laying on crimson silk before an astonished Simon. Mary's husband wore a horror expression since Mary led him to the ceremony room and urged him to help her with the ladder. He seemed shocked, as if he never had thought of such rooms inside his house. Or maybe what shocked him the most was Mary's awareness and familiarity with both the places.

Dr. Simpson listened to the children’s hearts again, and made a disapproving sound. He measured Mary’s dilation and the interval between her pains and waited while Simon paced non-stop. It took a few minutes for Mary’s waters to broke, but as soon as that happened, Dr. Simpson announced that the first baby’s head was visible.

Mary felt pain as she never thought was possible. She already thought that she had endured the worst pain in this world when she had her miscarriages, but she was wrong. The obstetrician instructed her to pant, to push, to not push. When he announced that the head was born, Mary felt relief.

“No! No, no, no. Not again!” Simon’s tone was anguished and Mary felt her blood to freeze. A foul and rotten smell rose in the air.

“What is it? What’s wrong? Simon, what’s wrong? Dr. Simpson…?” Mary babbled, panicking.

“Just pant, Mary. And in the next pain, push with all of your strength. Now pant.” Mary obeyed, but she still needed to know what was wrong.

It took some pains and some pushing, many more than Mary thought she could stand, for her baby to be out of her. She had watched movies, and she had read a lot of magazines, so she expected to hear the beautiful sound of a baby crying, but instead she listened to the horror tone on her husband voice asking “What’s this, Dr.? What happened? What..?”

She tried to make sense of what Dr. Simpson was doing, but she couldn’t, because she understood that he had cut the cord, but now he was placing her oversized and bluish baby inside a kidney dish and putting it aside. The baby’s body barely fit the container.

“I am sorry, Mr. Barrows, Mrs. Barrows. It was a boy.”

Mary felt her limbs going limp. She searched for Simon’s eyes, but he was staring at the kidney dish and at their baby, blue as death. The baby was chubby and motionless, and Mary saw tears pooling in her eyes. Helel always helped her when she needed the most. Why he had just abandoned her? A strong surge of pain brought Mary back to her labor, and she focused on her second child.

Dr. Simpson asked her to push when she felt the pain again, so they could work to bring her second baby’s head out. When Mary pushed, the whole little body slid from inside her to Dr. Simpson’s hands.

“Is he dead too, doctor? Is this why he is so… wrinkled?” Simon asked weakly.

Mary supported her weight on her elbows to try to see. The obstetrician had clamped the cord and was cutting it, and Mary saw the disgust on the man’s face. The foul smell intensified. Mary saw her second baby was a boy too, and he had yellowish skin, as if he was an old man; his arms and legs were distorted, and his eyes were closed. He didn’t seem too much human, and definitively not alive.

Mary let herself fall back on the mattress, her hands on her face while she cried. She listened to Simon’s voice talking something undistinguishable that sounded awfully like a pray, and soon after that Dr. Simpson’s yell filled the space between the cave walls.

“They ate my hand! Those… demons ate my hand!” The doctor held a bloodied mess in his left hand, and he was screaming. Simon approached the kidney dish, where Dr. Simpson tried to put the second baby over the first one when they attacked him, and looked with the same disgust Mary saw at the doctor’s face. She glanced at the dish and she saw her first baby moving lazily his fat arms and legs, while he produced a rough sound that didn’t resembled too much a cry, while his brother was writhing frantically.

“They should be dead!” Dr. Simpson cried. “They are not human! What did you do here, woman? They are not human! My hand!! Oh….”

Mary ignored the doctor’s mumblings and rose to her feet, approaching the kidney dish and taking one covered on blood baby in each of her arms. As if on cue, the second baby begun to shriek. Mary ordered Simon to do something about the doctor, but her husband was inert, in chock. Mary decided for ignoring both men for the moment, for going back to the bed, and for wrapping the babies on red linen while she cooed at them, welcoming them to this world. She could manage the remaining things after that.

 

* * *

 

Mary decided to stay in the basement for a while, and Simon did not make one single objection. He came to visit Mary twice a day, and usually brought food with him, but he could not pretend to Mary that he was glad to see his sons.

 She was looking at them, admired with their perfection to her eyes; their appearance was not of regular babies, no. They were unique. Robert was a bit smaller and thinner than a child with his gestational age should be, his skin looked a bit like crumpled, yellowish paper. He was smarter, though, than babies two or three weeks older than him. And Daniel was very chubby, his flesh was as soft as excessively fermented dough, and even passing three days his skin still was light hematoma-purplish. He was considerably bigger than his brother, and behaved exactly like a three-days-old infant should.

 Mary was feeling fulfilled. Those two little boys were hers to take care, to love and to see growing up. She would rather die than let anything bad happen to them; she would assure their happiness with all of herself.

 As she had suspected since they bit the doctor's hand, only plain milk was not enough to make them satiated. She confirmed it on the second night after their birth; she changed them, she breastfed them, hugged, sang, rocked them, but both babies were so agitated she did not knew what else to do. On pure despair, she dipped her forefinger in the underdone steak juice of her meal's leftover, and took it to Bobby’s mouth, then to Dan’s. As the children seemed interested on the juice, she repeated the gesture some times until they calmed down enough to be sleepy.Mary laid her head on the pillow and watched closely to Dan’s and Bobby’s chests rise and fall when they fell asleep, and it took not a long time for her to sleep too.


	3. Destruction

Simon was sat with Mary in the lounge after dinner. Mary had just visited the babies in the nursery – they were both asleep – and then she went to the kitchen to dismiss the maid for the night. Simon was flipping through some papers while Mary sipped her sherry. The silences between them just grew in the past two years.

 “I think we should leave Norway, Mary. We should start anew somewhere else. Maybe England, I still have some contacts there. We could buy a brighter, smaller house than this one. We should let all this heavy walls behind. You know, move forward.”

 Mary tried to get where this conversation was going to, but she could not. “I like the house. The boys like it too. If you had agreed to join us at the pool this weekend, you would have seen how much fun a pair of toddlers might have in a courtyard. It would do you no harm to loosen up a little.” She sipped again, feeling her arms begin to feel wobbly.

 “I think we shouldn’t take them with us.” Simon moved his eyes from his papers to stare at Mary. She raised an eyebrow and stared back. “We could take them to some exceptional children’s school. A boarding school. We could pay more for an extra nanny, or extra teacher for them. They would be educated and cared.”

 “Simon. Stop it. Are you really trying to convince me to leave my sons – yours too, by the way – to travel aboard in some teenager adventure? Are you insane? You’re talking about leaving two children by themselves. Can you please explain to me what is happening here?” Mary put her glass over the coffee table and crossed her arms.

 “They don’t feel right to me. Never did. Since the day they were born, I felt strange, as if they always belonged to this house, instead of me. There is something odd with them, I can tell, and I think you feel it too. At first, I thought they were just regular… regular malformed babies. But I feel too uneasy with them.”

 It seemed Simon intended to continue talking, but Mary stood up and that interrupted him. “So, to make a long story short, you want to leave us. Am I correct?”

 “No. I want you and me to leave them. They will harm us, Mary. Wasn’t it enough what they did to Dr. Simpson? What we… we _had_ to do because of them?” Simon’s voice broke.

 “I am done with this talking. I am coming to the bedroom, and I don’t want you there. You had a nice childhood, you don’t know what it’s like to have a father turning his back on you. Lucky you. But hear this, Simon. You will never set me apart from my babies.”

 “Mary, wait.”

 “You disappoint me. You thought I would choose you over my children. You thought I am like my mother. I don’t doubt she would be able to abandon me, if the circumstances were alike. But not me. Wherever I go, my children will come with me.”

 “They can’t leave this house, Mary.” Simon begged, exasperated. “Who would accept them besides you? Outside of here, there is no place for them. I am suggesting that we all leave for different places so they can have their lives around here, and us, somewhere else. They will harm us if we all stay together. And somebody will harm them if they go away.”

 Mary left the lounge with no other word, since there was nothing else to be said.

 

* * *

 

That was just the first quarrel between the couple over that topic. Simon always insisted that they should leave, but he still paid visits to the nursery daily. In this meantime, Mary watched the development of her sons, the way they seemed attracted to killing insects after torturing them, their appreciation for blood and raw meat – she had placed some traps to catch crows to feed the children along with other kinds of food –, the way their bodies grew, Dan’s seeming to just grow in size since he was six months old, Bobby’s development _almost_ like the magazines used to describe.

 However, since that first argument, Mary could not stop thinking on what Simon said about someone hurting her children. The mere possibility that they could suffer made Mary angry, and soon she was wondering in which circumstances anyone would be able to injure them. She waited for her husband to go to work, and as soon as Mary put Bobby and Dan for the afternoon nap, she took her board and called for the spirits.

 She called no name in special, instead she just asked who was there and talked to whoever they are. Questions as ‘Is there anyone among you who wants to hurt Dan and Bobby?’ and ‘Are my sons safe inside this house?’ were answered in the most opposite fashions. Some spirits claimed that they could not harm the little Barrows, since the boys were the family’s heirs. Others seemed very pleased in try to scare Mary, telling her that they wanted very much to do awful things to the children.

 Mary spent a whole afternoon opening and closing séances. Not quite satisfied yet, she went back to her questions the next day. “And from outside of the house?” Mary asked aloud in her apparently empty religious study room. “Is there any danger from outside of the Clock Tower?” That question and similar ones was responded with more frantic movements from the planchette, the answers again varying from pleasant to threatening ones. Mary ignored everything she did not liked, with one exception.

 T-H-E-I-M-M-U-R-E-D-D-O-C-T-O-R-H-A-D-A-D-A-U-G-H-T-E-R

 he immured Dr. Walter Simpson. The night Dan and Bobby were born, Mary managed to get a chocked Simon to offer one specific drink to an even more chocked Dr. Simpson. After that, she talked the caretaker into dragging the unconscious physician to an empty room, and then a mislead man from town made a brickwork to close the room’s doors and windows.

 He had a daughter, then, and some unknown spirit claimed that she could offer risk to Dan and Bobby. That could mean nothing, as most of the things the hostile spirits used to say to Mary, but it was worthy an investigation.

 

* * *

 

“Yes, _Ms. Mary_ lives here.”

 Simon answered the telephone and was looking to Mary from the other side of the room. She was helping four-years-old Bobby to cut some colorful paper into animal shapes, while five feet tall Dan petted awkwardly a panicked puppy. Simon held the handset towards his wife and went back to stare at his children while she got up from the floor and walked towards the telephone, grabbing the handset.

 “Mary here.” She watched Simon sit down again and then she concentrated in the talking. She had been working in the Granite Orphanage – an institution for orphaned girls where Dr. Simpson’s daughter lived - for a couple of months as a secretary, and now one of her friendly colleagues called her to chat. She was not especially fond of none of her co-workers, but she made an effort to socialize to maintain appearances of normality. She intended to keep herself employed there so she could keep one eye on the girl.

 Simon seemed disgusted by the vision of the children, but entranced by it all the same. Mary talked watching the trio until Dan broke the neck of the puppy. While Mary finished the call with her colleague, Simon cursed and left the room, Bobby put aside the paper and grabbed the puppy’s corpse, Dan crawled to the closed door and begun to wail for not being able to follow his father.

 Mary took the scissor from Bobby’s hands before he could attempt to cut one of the puppy’s toes; she was done with cleaning blood from her rugs. She put the scissor over the coffee table, took Bobby by the hand and marched to the kitchen, where she retrieved a big piece of bacon from the fridge and put it on her son’s other hand.

 “Be nice for mom, will you? Will you help me to put Dan back in his room? We can chase a cat in the courtyard later.”

 Bobby nodded, and they went back to the lounge, where Dan was found eating the puppy’s corpse, the rug beneath him in need of a deep cleaning again. Mary took the remains of the dog’s flesh from Dan, and the purple baby-shaped boy complained, crying loudly. Mary waved the half-eaten flesh in front of him, and begun to walk towards the corridor.

 “Come, Dan, my baby. Let’s go back to your room. Bobby, follow me.”

 Mother and sons headed to the elevator, Mary calling for Dan while she and Bobby waved the puppy’s flesh and the piece of bacon. Once Mary settled Dan between his crimson linen, she took Bobby’s hand and went back to the house.

 

* * *

 

Jennifer Simpson was a sweet girl that used to make friends with ease and was extremely polite to the orphanage staff. Always a new child entered the institution, she promptly showed the place for her, explained the rules and introduced her to everyone. Mary observed closely, wondering why a darling child like that would be able to harm any of her sons. Anyway, the woman would keep her vigilance.

 

* * *

 

Mary noticed Simon had been changing a lot during the past years, probably since Dan and Bobby were born. He was being more withdrawn, he didn’t told her about his day at work anymore, he didn’t asked about her day, and even if Mary tried so hard to fill him in with their sons accomplishments, he didn’t seem interested at all. She usually did not let herself follow the trail of thought that he might not love his children. If that was a truth, Mary would promptly dislike him completely, and she did not want that. She chose him many years ago to be her partner for life. How many times she caught herself imagining their last days together, both of them wrinkled and with snowy hair, taking care of each other when their grandchildren went home with their parents?

But with each day that passed, that past wonderings seemed more and more with dreams than with possibilities for a future. Simon hasn’t the easy smile anymore, and he often was seen staring at Mary or at the children not saying one single word. He now cursed often, even with Mary asking him not to do it in front of the kids.

Even in bed, he changed. He didn’t started any intimacy with Mary for years now, and when she tried anything, he avoided her. Neither using lust rituals she would have him again, and the few reasons she could think of was or that she was not really that interested in him anymore, or he was absolutely past the possibility of desiring her.

So, when Simon informed Mary that he got a medical leave and he would spend more time at home, she was not surprised. He seemed shocked, though, as if it was something absurd that his physician claimed he was stressed and needed some rest.

 

* * *

 

Jennifer managed to get a little party for her eleventh birthday, so beloved she was by both staff and the other orphans at the orphanage. Mary witnessed the girl promising her seemingly best friend, Laura, to organize a party for her too in her friend’s next birthday.

 

* * *

 

Mary arrived home to find Dan, a six-feet six-year-old, sitting in the middle of the foyer surrounded by wreckage from the indoors balcony, his chubby purplish hands and his chin covered in blood, clapping hands happily while he laughed, a trail of blood starting where he was sat and disappearing through one of the doors. Mary followed the trail of blood in a haste, just to find the old caretaker – the same one that watched Simon grow up – dead in the courtyard, one of his legs half eaten. Bobby, who seemed too small for the huge hedge-clipper, was cutting the old man while Simon watched the scene with a maniac, dark laugh, sat by a corner near the pool, rocking his body back and forth. Simon lost it, Mary realized in shock. Putting her concerns towards her husband aside for a while, Mary focused back on Bobby.

“Bobby darling, give the scissor to mom, please? You are hurting the poor man.” Mary approached her son carefully with outstretched hands. The boy just stared at his mother for a second, and then resumed his task.

“Dan’s hungry. Dad didn’t give crow to Dan. Dad wanted Dan to be hungry. Bobby take care of Dan. Mom asked Bobby to take care of Dan.”

 

* * *

 

Everything made a strange sort of sense since the caretaker’s death. Simon’s distance, his awkwardness in his work environment, his leave, all the wordless staring. Mary felt a now unfamiliar feeling: she was sad. She wanted Simon to be a good father because she knew he was able to be a wonderful husband. She wanted things to be back to the happy state they were before, because now Simon was turning into someone she could not to trust, least of all to love.

She wanted to feel safe and in peace again, just like before; she wanted her children to grow up safely and happily. A maddened husband and father inside the same house as them was not a good prospect. Simon needed to be the nice man he once was again, or Mary would have to do something to fix the situation.

 

* * *

 

A shortage of staff in the orphanage made the headmistress to ask Mary to fill in for some weeks doing small odd jobs such as to buy supplies for the kitchen or supervising the girls during tea time, or even helping some orphans to do homework. During this time, Mary became a little closer to the orphans, and she learned that there was a girl named Ann, about Jennifer’s age, that seemed immune to Dr. Simpson’s daughter’s charm.

 

* * *

 

The episode with the caretaker’s death had aftereffects. Mary, now aware of the poor mental state of her husband, noticed that leaving her sons to go to the orphanage trusting that he would take care of them was a mistake. Observing both boys’ behavior and talking to Bobby the little he talked, Mary concluded that Simon’s refusal to feed dead crows to Dan had the real meaning of a refusal to feed both boys at all.

Few years before, Mary had dismissed the remaining servants that lived in the mansion with the family except the caretaker, knowing that the peculiar looks of her sons could scare short-minded people, and chose to hire a housekeeper for half time period. After the caretaker’s death she had a gardener visiting regularly and she hired specific help when any other repair was needed. So, she could not rely in a servant to feed her sons and to take care of them while she took care of abandoned children. She needed her husband to be a real father, and she was utterly displeased with him in this regard.

Another consequence of the old man’s death was that Mary feared some of the caretaker’s friends or relatives could show up looking for him, and she did not intended to say that one of her sons had killed the man to feed his brother, nor that she let the same son to cut the man’s body in smaller pieces so she could put them away in the fridge to feed Dan again later.

But although no one of the caretaker’s family had ever shown up, the situation planted a doubt’s seed in Mary’s head: what about Dr. Simpson? A few days after her sons’ birth, Mary saw at the local news a note about the missing man and the lack of clues of his whereabouts. Wasn't he being searched by anyone? 

And now Simon mumbled constantly about the Bobby’s new favorite toy, the hedge-clipper, and said that he should leave, that Dan and Bobby were abominations to fear, not to love, and sometimes he humbly asked Mary if they both could leave and just let the boys behind, house and all.

The day he claimed that he was done with his children and that he would leave them and his wife, Mary decided to do something. She knew what was to feel the rejection of a father, and she would not let that happen to her sons. The boys obviously loved Simon. He had no right to just leave. So she acted to prevent any serious attempt of an escape. Using the excuse of desiring a safe kennel for when she bought a big dog, Mary transformed the shed into something that resembled a cage, or a prison, and with Bobby’s help, she locked Simon inside it.

 

* * *

  

When the redhead tomboy called Lotte was transferred from a mixed institution to the Granite Orphanage because of too many fights against boys, predictably Jennifer welcomed the girl. However, who actually established an instant rapport with Lotte was Ann. 

 Mary watched those changes in the dynamic of the twelve or so years old girls thinking about the changes inside her own household. Dan and Bobby were seven, now, and the chubby boy did not fit the elevator anymore, so he was confined in his room in the cave-like basement. Mary wondered how it will be when he was a teenager, but that was a worry for the future. For now, Mary bought some puppies for him to play because he absolutely loved the little furry things, and she was putting some effort into teach him to not kill them. 

 In this meantime, Bobby had been perfecting his abilities with the hedge-clipper. Mary adopted cats to Bobby hunt, and he usually made a victory dance when he got one, usually taking the corpses to his brother to eat, the caring boy. 

 

* * *

 

The orphanage headmistress asked Mary to accompany one of the social workers to a visit to some prospective parents' house alleging she was quite acquainted with the orphan girls, so she would be of great help to the adoption's process. 

 Soon Mary was officially out of the position of Secretary and was employed as Adoption Programs’ Assistant for lack of formal education in that area, or she would be employed as Casework Supervisor. She kept some of the odd jobs, namely the ones performed closely to the orphans. And as she was not required at the office anymore, she gained a vantage point to stalk Jennifer.

 The girl was curious and strong-willed, and since she learned that Lotte came from a mixed orphanage, she poured the new girl with questions; by the time her fierce curiosity had been satiated, she became friends with Lotte. Ann was brought to the group by Lotte, and Laura by Jennifer, and in no time the four girls were attached to each other. They had meals together, they studied together, they gossiped, giggling, while they whispered boys’ names. Mary watched from a distance, still the passive observer, sure she had never been a foolish, giggling teenager like that in her days.

 

* * *

 

Bobby was grabbing his inseparable hedge-clipper while he observed his parents from a shed’s corner. Mary brought a tray of food to Simon, containing juice, milk, tea, biscuits, toast, jam and scrambled eggs. The man was sitting against the wall, staring at nothing, ignoring the presence of his wife and son.

“You know things did not needed to be like this, don’t you?” Mary asked while she put the tray on the floor and pushed it with one foot until most of it had passed the bars. “I could bring you some food more often. With less than forty-eight hours of interval.” Simon crawled to the bars and begun to shove eggs inside his mouth, desperately. “If you only were less stubborn. You could even be freed eventually.”

“They are destroying you.” He answered spitting food. “You were nice once. You should kill them both. If you release me, I will run away. Granted. But I will put the police here as soon as I can. Anyone who had known the doctor would call the police. You are lucky the caretaker had no family.” He ate a little more before he resumed his talking. “They are evil, Mary.”

“You will never leave this shed. I will keep feeding you because I want you alive. I will not make my sons orphans. I am a good mother. But don’t cross me, or I can forget to put some things in the tray next time.”

Mary waited until Simon finished eating, retrieved the tray and left the shed with a silent Bobby following suit.

 

* * *

 

Mary entered the dormitory to check on a girl that was resting on bed, reading; it was one of the girl’s recurrent bronchitis crises. Mary talked to her, asked about her breath, gave her a medication previously prescribed by a physician and checked if the inhaler was at the bedside table.

 Jennifer and her friends were seated on the same nearest bed whispering to one another in a very audible tone. While Mary took care of the girl, she overheard what was the topic of the conversation; they were discussing the whereabouts of the parents of one of them.

 “She can’t be so sure, that’s why I’m telling you guys this is nonsense.” It seemed to Mary that this was Lotte talking. “How old was she?”

 “Don’t know, ask her.” Ann answered. “How old were you when you first came here, Jennifer?”

 When Mary understood whose parents the girls were talking about, she managed to find some laundry to fold, and she was glad the resting girl had a lot of small chores to be done.

 Jennifer finished talking whatever she was talking before she responded Ann. “I was five when I came here. Dad gone missing, Mom died. But they never found him, and I know he can’t be dead. I just know.”

 “That is what I call nonsense.” Lotte declared. “Jennifer, your faith makes absolutely no sense. Not at all. If he is not dead, he is somewhere. And if he is somewhere else but near you, it seems to me that he just fled you. I’m sorry, but that is the truth.”

 “Okay, guys. Laura, will _you_ help me? My father is missing, not dead. I can feel he is alive. Someone might have kept him hostage or something. All you have to do is go with me to the hospital where he last worked. I will make the questions, I will ask for any record of my father’s patients. Just come with me, please!”

 “Who would keep a man hostage for nine years and never contact his family?” Lotte asked, her voice not a whisper anymore.

 “Why do you think the police did not do it already, nine years ago?” Ann was shushed by Laura, and her sentence’s ending was almost inaudible.

 Mary had finished all she could do for the ill orphan and now she was deliberately listening to the girls’ talk. At least she had her back to them.

 “He may be kept as sexual slave.” Mary heard all girls making some sound of incredulity. “I don’t know! You don’t know! But he is not dead. Please, anyone, come with me? They will never let me go alone!”

 At that point Mary felt four pair of eyes on her back, since she was naturally included in “they”. She recommended the girl to keep drinking water and left the dormitory.

 

* * *

 

The next days found Mary worrying about what she heard on the dormitory. Jennifer was wrong, her father was dead and imprisoned in a doorless, windowless room. But her probing could attract unwanted attention. Mary had two deaths and one confinement on her back, and she would certainly be considered a criminal once those things were discovered, and then she would have to respond for them.

 That was not a possibility for Mary. A death sentence, or even mere imprisonment, could never happen to her just because she could never leave her sons by themselves. Who would care for them? Who would feed them, change Dan’s linens, dress Bobby? Who would love them and support them, provide them with their special needs? It was imperative that Mary stayed inside the Clock Tower. Who would comfort Bobby when he got afraid of the big clock’s noise? Who would collect crows to nourish them in their needs for fresh blood? No one could take her place as their mother. They were hers, and she was theirs for consequence. She could never, ever, flee them.

 Mary knew she had to act, the sooner the better. The house’s spirits had warned her that Jennifer could offer risk to her sons, but she didn’t understood why at first. Now everything was clear. Jennifer had the power of indirectly harm Bobby and Dan by setting them apart of their mother. Mary would never let that happen.

 

* * *

 

Mary entered the Ceremony Room dressed on her black robes. She had changed some things in the room, as drawing the Baphomet symbol on the floor and putting a beautiful painting of Bobby in the wall. She filled the chalice with scotch and put the parchment in which was written _I want Jennifer dead_ beside the lit right candle.

She took the bell and rang it nine times while she walked circling the Baphomet symbol on a counter clockwise direction. She returned the bell to the altar, took the dagger, then faced her son’s picture and pointed to it with the dagger to invocate Satan in a loud, clear voice. Then she proceeded with the Infernal names.

“Baphomet, Dracula, Azazel, Sammael, Balaam, Shiva, Shaitan, Abaddon, Thamuz, Baalberith, Euronymos, Dagon, Damballa, Nihasa, Ahpuch, Bilé, Emma-O, Mictian, Beelzebub, Sekhmet!”

Mary took the chalice and drained all the scotch, feeling heat spreading through her body almost instantly. She put the chalice on the altar and begun her second circling movement through the room calling the four princes of Hell, one from each cardinal point, while she pointed to each direction with the dagger. After putting it in the altar, Mary claimed:

“Behold! The mighty voices of my vengeance smash the stillness of the air and stand as monoliths of wrath upon a plain of writhing serpents. I am become as a monstrous machine of annihilation to the festering fragments of the body of she who would detain me. I call upon the messengers of doom to slash with grim delight this victim I hath chosen. Oh come forth in the name of Abaddon and destroy her whose name I giveth as a sign. I thrust aloft the bifid barb of Hell and on its tines resplendently impaled my sacrifice through vengeance rests! Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!”

Mary seized a pair of kitchen scissors and the corpse of a crow she had brought before she initiated the ritual, and pictured inside her mind what she wanted to happen to the teenager. She looked deeply to Bobby’s picture and imagined what he would do to her.

He would cut Jennifer’s throat – Mary enlarged the cut on the crow’s neck with the scissor –, then he would detach her arms just like Mary was cutting off the crow’s wings. The cold blood dripped on the floor, and Mary inhaled its scent. She needed Jennifer to bleed just like that. She needed the girl ceased to be a danger to Mary and her sons. She needed Jennifer to be as dead as this crow was. Bobby would do it. Bobby could do it. Mary focused on his picture again, feeling Jennifer’s blood between her fingers, making her palms slick. Mary cut the bird’s stomach – Jennifer’s stomach – and planned what part to feed Dan first. Bobby would cut the girl’s legs – Mary rehearsed the movement on the crow.

Or maybe Bobby would just stab Jennifer until nothing was left but a shapeless mass of flesh and blood – bringing them all back to the safety. Mary stabbed the crow, kneeling on the floor and thrusting the point of the scissor again and again on the bird’s corpse, thinking of how much she needed that girl’s death, how much she needed to get rid of the menacing fourteen-years-old girl.

Mary felt her arms shaky by the repetitive effort, and dried the sweat from her forehead with her forearm. She shook her hands a little and got up, drawing a deep breath. Mary walked to the altar and held the piece of parchment, leaving bloody fingerprints on it, and read it aloud.

“I want Jennifer dead. Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!”

Then she grabbed the dagger and pinned it through the parchment, held the dagger over the candle and watched the parchment burn.

Mary took a piece of paper containing the Tenth Enochian Key, regarding wrath and the production of violence, and read it. Then she put away the paper, took the bell, and walked in the same counter clockwise movement ringing it for nine times again.

“So it is done.”

 

* * *

 

In a pleasant afternoon, Mary walked the path that lead from the town to the Clock Tower followed by her four newly-adopted daughters. Mary decided to adopt the three Jennifer’s friends too to increase Bobby’s fun and Dan’s meals, and the act seemed a beautiful one to the outside. The rich and good Ms. Mary had ended the misery of four poor teenager orphan girls, ensuring not only material livelihood to them, but human support too, since the girls were inseparable and now they were legally sisters.

 Jennifer approached Mary _again_ while the other girls were some steps behind. “Ms. Mary?” The girl called.

 “Yes?”

 “From now on, what kind of place will we be living in?”

 “That’s the fifth time you asked!” Mary answered, beginning to feel tired of the repetitive questioning. She managed to disguise her exasperation. “Don’t worry. It’s a very nice place.”


End file.
